


Interlude for Swans

by Ael_tRlailiiu



Series: Black Swans [3]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Companionable Snark, Friendship, Gen, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-26
Updated: 2012-10-26
Packaged: 2017-11-17 02:03:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ael_tRlailiiu/pseuds/Ael_tRlailiiu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the Avengers decide to *be* the Avengers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interlude for Swans

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [project adulthood](https://archiveofourown.org/works/491553) by [irnan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan). 



> This was cut from my new in-progress fic because it doesn't really fit, but I wanted to keep it. The robots were partially inspired by Irnan's Project Adulthood.

Steve was surprised when Tony actually showed up for their training session. It wasn't charitable, but the man was not known for reliability, and he _had_ just recovered from a concussion. He might not have been to bed yet, but he appeared at the correct address a few minutes after eight, shadow-eyed, coffee in tow.

“Morning,” Steve said. “Come on in.” He stood aside and watched the cab make its way down the street. “We'll turn you into a New Yorker yet.”

“I'll ask for a mercy killing first, those guys do not shut up no matter how much money you wave at them.” Tony looked up at the crumbled brick facade. “Does this place really need to be kept hush-hush?”

“Better safe than sorry.”

They went inside the abandoned warehouse Natasha had found, its upper reaches criss-crossed by catwalks, the floor heaped with debris. The weather had finally cooled off, but the interior managed to be stuffy. She and Clint circled each other in the far corner, threw a few light jabs and teasing remarks. None of them were in “uniform,” just regular workout gear.

Steve watched Tony, curious to see what he would look for when he assessed a place, and wasn't surprised to see him check out the high angles first, the places where cameras or other devices might be concealed (Natasha and Clint had installed motion detectors but nothing else, in case of squatters), to gauge how much room there might be to maneuver. His glance moved from there to the structure, the rusted I-beams and concrete-wrapped pillars, picking out the building supports—and the weak points. Steve had been over the files, and knew Tony was not averse to dropping a building on people he considered deserving.

“All right,” Tony said eventually, giving Steve a raised-brow look. “I hope we all have updated tetanus shots. What's the deal here?”

“Just hang out and watch for a while. We'll break in a half hour and start figuring out how to pull you in.”

“You're the captain.”

No one broke any bones or actually tried to kill anyone else, so Steve labeled the morning a success.

Natasha and Clint—he couldn't help but think of them as the easy ones. The ones used to the discipline, the ones who had spent so much of their lives fighting that they moved with ease on any battlefield. The hard part if anything had been working Steve into their communion. To do that fully might take years, but they had reached a point where they could handle a new variable—maybe. One thing Tony was _really not_ good at in a fight was communicating. Understandable holdover from all that time flying solo, and at least he seemed interested in the idea of working together.

Some days, Steve thought he might be getting the hang of this. Not just him, either; when he called a halt, he got a trio of expectant looks that said all three of them had figured out that he was up to something and it only remained to figure out what.

He looked around at the vault that had echoed with violent sounds for the past hour, looked at them and said, “Think we're done here. Let's grab breakfast.”

Clint picked the place, a diner they had never been to before, and a booth that had clear lines of sight. The SHIELD agents took the window seats, where they could keep an eye on the passers-by and where Clint wouldn't have to watch Tony fidget. Steve sat next to Natasha. He expected commentary on the locale, but Tony seemed subdued as he stacked jam packets into precipitous towers, and no one talked much until the waitress had left the coffee pot and gone away.

“That was kind of fun,” Tony said. “Also kind of... eerily professional? We're not the Commandos, Steve.”

“I know that. The world doesn't need that right now. The question is, does the world need us.” He looked at their still, guarded expressions. “It needed us once, and we worked. We did it. Since then we've done a few other things, and that worked. The question is, do we keep doing that? Or do we try for something more.”

“Man with a plan, huh?”

Steve frowned. He should be used to this by now. “Not a plan. A question.”

“You must have an answer in mind. Come on, share with the class.”

“Cut it out,” Clint said, his voice suddenly rough. “Just this once. It's... yeah, this is something we need to figure out. You're the one trying to get everyone under one roof, Stark.”

“Be that as it may,” Steve interrupted before Tony could get any more defensive. “It's not about location, it's about who we are. What we do. Why we do it.”

Nastasha nodded. “Who do we work for, is the question you are not asking.”

“That, too.”

Clint watched a car move down the street. “Shouldn't Bruce be in this discussion? Thor?”

“If they want to. It's not like it's all or nothing. Unless we think it should be.”

“I can see this is going to be very productive,” Tony said. “Maybe we should just take turns.”

“We could all go our separate ways again,” Steve said. “It's not like we don't have things to do, and the world doesn't seem like it needs saving all that often. We go do our own things and let them yell when they need us. It's worked so far.”

“SHIELD,” Tony said, and tipped over the stack he had built.

“There is that.”

“You're asking about loyalties,” Natasha said.

“Among other things.” He looked around the table. Look at us pretending to be normal people, deciding the fate of the world. “It's happened once. It will happen again. They're going to need us—or someone like us. It's like climbing Everest, right? No one did it, until they did, and now grannies can sign up for package tours. Thor's said that we attracted attention. We should expect more of it.”

Steve watched them think about it. He knew that they were different from him, that they would never believe in the things he believed in. Knew how Tony would scoff at any notion of duty, Natasha at loyalty, Clint at trust. Too many times betrayed and betraying to risk anything at all for a word, but they would spend themselves unhesitating for true things.

“Even without that—just on Earth. We're nuclear weapons,” Natasha said, her words carefully spaced. Tony scowled at her. She raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “The six of us stopped Loki. Just us.”

Tony snorted. “What we are is a goddamn flock of black swans. Statistically speaking, none of us should even _exist_.”

“That's true as well.” A hint of a smile touched her lips. “Unpredictable. Uncontrollable.”

“Not gonna stop people trying.”

“Probably not,” Steve allowed. “That's one side. The other is what Bruce said, back at Chaos HQ. The genie doesn't go back in the bottle.”

“Making us what, the equalizers?” Tony shook his head.

“Maybe. People know what kind of stuff is out there now. Aliens and laser guns and flying cars. More will show up _here_ now that people know it can be done. Someone's going to have to deal with it.”

“Might as well be the ones who've done it before? My god, did you two rehearse this?” Tony glanced from Natasha to Steve. “All right, all right. The world is weird and complicated, we are Needed. Full stop. Team it is. Love it. You're killing me. How's this gonna work?”

“I think the way we're doing things now is pretty good. I'd like us to prepare a little bit better, against whatever comes looking for us next, and I'd like to figure out some way to not actually be dependent on SHIELD—on anyone—if we can. I know that puts the two of you in an awkward position.”

“We'll think it over,” Natasha said. “Sort something out. They might be glad to have us off their hands, after everything that's happened.”

“Aren't you in the same position?” Clint asked. “More or less.”

Steve shrugged. “They've made overtures. I'm on retainer as an adviser. But I've had contacts from a lot of people since we got back from our last mission. I'm a private citizen now.” He smiled at the irony. “We can work out the details as we go. Not like we have a deadline. But we're agreed?”

Natasha and Clint looked at each other and nodded.

“Avengers it is,” she said.

Tony hoisted his coffee in salute. “To teamwork.”

*

Thor frowned as he tried to map the concepts to ones he knew. “You describe an adventuring company. That we shall formalize our bonds with one another, and pledge ourselves to a task.”

Steve hesitated, but nodded. “That's more or less the size of it.”

“I would be proud to count myself among this company.”

*

Bruce sighed. “Are you crazy? Wait, don't answer that. The Other Guy doesn't _work_ that way.”

“You don't know that for certain,” Tony said.

“And you don't know nearly as much as you think you do.” He held up a hand. “It's a nice thought. Really. But it's never going to work. I like it here. I like that I can... contribute to things, once in a while, but I can't make any kind of commitment, and I will _not_ treat my—my condition—lightly. Ever.” He looked ready to flee right then and there.

Tony shook his head. “Your call. We'll be here when you change your mind.”

“Forget it.” He stalked away.

*

Tony spent most of the following week in his workshop, the music volume sufficient to warn everyone else off from interrupting. The next Saturday, he showed up at the warehouse with a duffel bag and a cat-with-a-canary expression.

“D'you want to buy this place?” he asked Steve. “I could do that, put in a few amenities. Or a jungle gym, or whatever.”

“Might be nice, but I think we ought to find a new spot soon. Don't want to get too used to one location. What's that?”

“Suit yourself.” He dropped the bag; it made a dull clonking sound. “My little contribution to the festivities.”

Steve opened it up and found a dozen small objects, a little larger than a softball but made of intricately-pieced together metal, their surfaces matte-dull and smooth except for a clearly marked button.

“Go ahead.” Tony did something on his phone.

Steve pressed the button. The sphere leaped into the air on what must be the world's tiniest repulsor and sprouted a half dozen short nozzles. A targeting laser dot appeared on Steve's chest.

“Would you like to play a game?” the sphere inquired mechanically. Clint choked on a laugh.

“Not bad.” The globe swooped back when Steve reached for it. “What's it got in there?”

“They're loaded with paint rounds,” Tony said. “They can be set to hunter-killer mode, including full stealth, or,” he tapped at his phone again, and a faint human-shaped hologram appeared around the sphere, “to prey mode.”

Clint grinned. “Oh, this'll be _fun_. Not exactly fair, though—you programmed them.”

“That's the best part.” Tony grinned back. “Next week I'll have the mobile app done. Basic first-person shooter with some strategy and whatever terrains you want to plug in. Anybody out there can set up new behaviors, play against each other, in groups, whatever. JARVIS'll pick the best ones and load them in.”

Natasha blinked. “You crowd-sourced our training program?”

“Yep.”

Clint was already stalking the one in flight. “SHIELD would give you a fortune for these.”

“Good thing I already have a fortune. We'll keep these puppies private.” He looked at Steve.

Steve raised his eyebrows. “You know that you guys are looking at a dozen killer robots like they're the best thing _ever_ , right?”

“Yeah, and?” Clint shrugged.

“I think this Avengers thing is going to work just fine.”

“Does this mean you'll finally move in?” Tony said. “I've got like sixteen empty floors we can use for wargames.”

Steve grinned. “Well, why didn't you say so?”

It was the most fun Steve had had since... since Bucky died, to be brutally honest, and he kept the apartment, but he did move in at the Tower.

Time passed.


End file.
